tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Mar 04 16:41:25 1997
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RE: UNO & colors
- From: "David Trimboli" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: UNO & colors
- Date: Wed, 5 Mar 97 00:36:46 UT
On Tuesday, March 04, 1997 5:05 PM, [email protected] on behalf of Joel
Peter Anderson wrote:
> > Simply because a culture doesn't have separate names for what you might
> > label as two distinct colors should not suggest that they cannot
> > perceive the difference between them.
>
> Yes! I've always liked this as an example of the alien-ness
> of Klingons. I'd doubt that we'd see them use the colors
> Blue, Green and Yellow distinctly (as we appear to see them do)
> if they couldn't perceive them.
No, that's not it. In fact, many real languages have far fewer basic color
words than English. I believe English has more than any other language, with,
what, 11? In extreme cases, some languages may even have only two!
This isn't the point that makes Klingons alien. What does is that color-word
research has determined that all human languages have certain patterns which
their color words follow. Klingon violates this, by grouping "yellow" with
"blue" and "green." For Klingons, it seems that yellow is a "cool" color,
while for all humans it seems to be regarded as a "warm" color. As far as I
know, in all natural human languages this is the case. I don't think Okrand
was intending to make any points about the eyesight of Klingons or how their
brains interpret visual information, he was just having some fun by messing
with the rules. But it is this fact that makes the Klingon color words
"alien."
> I remember that HolQeD article, but don't see it in the index at
> www.kli.org. When was that, and can someone summarize?
HolQeD 5:2, "Klingon Colours" by Nick Nicholas. And done.
--
SuStel
Beginners' Grammarian